Since early times, families have adopted children in all parts of the world. Records describing adoption in Ancient Rome, Babylonia, and China show the similarities and differences to the adoption practices we know today. This comprehensive resource provides both historical and current information on all aspects of adoption, from many countries and religions, including Africa, Britain, Canada, China, India, Islam, Japan, Jewish, Mexico, Mormon, and others. It provides information on the cultural, ethical, financial, legal, medical, psychological, and social implications of adoption. It highlights perspectives of the birth parents, adopting parents and the adopted child; open and closed adoption; national and international adoption; and grandparent and single-parent adoption. Primary documents, biographies of those in the adoption field, and sidebars identifying special facts relating to the history and experience of adoption, complete this most exhaustive resource that no library serving adopting parents, adoptees, or practitioners in the field will want to be without.
Entries include: Abandonment and Adoption in European Folk Tales, Adopted Child Syndrome, Adoptee Search Movement, Adoption Literature Sample, Africa and Adoption, Assisted Reproductive Technologies Adoption, Birthfathers, Child Welfare League of America, Chinese History and Adoption, Embryo Adoption, Gay Adoption, Grandparent Adoption, Group Adoption and Shared Motherhood, Judaism and Adoption, Medical Issues in Adoption, Orphanages, Post Adoption Services, Termination of Parental Rights, and U.S. Children's Bureau and Adoption.
Kathy Shepherd Stolley is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virginia. Her emphasis is applied sociology. Her work on adoption includes journal articles on statistics, relinquishment, and the portrayal of pregnancy resolution options in college textbooks. Dr. Stolley edited the applied journal, Social Insight: Knowledge at Work. She is the author of The Basics of Sociology (Greenwood, 2005).
Vern L. Bullough was Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York. He was the author, co-author, or editor of over 50 books, contributed chapters or sections to 100 other books, authored over 150 articles in refereed journals, and hundreds of others in a variety of publications. He traveled and lectured in over 35 foreign countries, and in most of the states of the United States. He was a fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, a Laureate in the International Academy of Humanism, a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and won numerous awards for his research and writing including the Alfred Kinsey award, and the John Money award. He received an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York. Among other things he served on the advisory board for the Los Angeles County Board of Adoptions, and was the proud parent of both natural and adopted children.
